tl;dr: How do I get headless Ubuntu to stop "helpfully" not booting to a desktop? It's a weird use case, I admit, but I have a Linux Plex server that also runs Transmission for BitTorrent and I want ...

I need to consult the hive mind on this one. I do a lot of work with Node.js & CouchDB on Ubuntu servers, but they are always virtualized, either VMWare guests or Linodes. I'm a mac guy, and I don't ...